The present invention relates to a package for an elongate medical article such as a needle-shaped article or a rod-shaped article that can be made economically, carried conveniently, and can assure sterilization.
Various types of needle-shaped articles such as acupuncture needles, injection needles, etc, and rod-shaped articles such as swabs, are commonly used in hospitals, clinical laboratories, and many other places where needles are packaged in a structure consisting of a plurality of packaging spaces, each containing a single needle, arranged in a matrix, or are individually packaged in single encapsulators as shown in FIGS. 5 and 6.
However, in order to prevent a needle or rod from vibrating during transportation, which may cause the needle to puncture through the packaging material and injure the user, or cause the needle to fall off through the broken space of the packaging material, subsequently injuring other innocent people, conventional forms of packaging either vacuum package the needle so that it firmly clings to the upper or lower portion of the packaging bodies, or reinforce the hardness and resilience of the packaging material at the tail or rear portion of the needle so that the sharp tail end may not puncture through the packaging material.
Such forms of packaging are inconvenient and cumbersome, in that the user has to tear open the main body of the package in order to access the needle, and, in so doing, may use so much force that the recoil causes the needle to fall to the ground after opening, subjecting it to contamination or, conversely so little force that the package is unable to be opened.
The package can also be used to house cotton swabs, which are commonly used by related fields, such as oralogy, otorhinology, obstetrics, and gynecology, so as to prevent contamination from bacteria, viruses, etc, and in electronics to insure a dust free environment.
In view of the drawbacks of conventional packages for needle-shaped and rod-shaped articles which provide a plurality of packaging spaces arranged in a matrix, but produce some problems in drawing out or using the contained needles, the present invention solves the problems heretofore commonly existing in conventional packaging structures for a needle.
It is the purpose of this present invention, therefore, to mitigate and/or obviate the above-mentioned drawback in the manner set forth in the detailed description of the preferred embodiment.